


oh, the weapons you make

by alpacas



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Gen, but i also didn't rewatch or anything so the details are like ehhh, can you believe this is a ship now? cuz i cannot, set almost exclusively during and around episode 71
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:20:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21712891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacas/pseuds/alpacas
Summary: Are you in love with Nott?Beau asked. The answer had been no, of course, and he hadn’t known how to immediately explain it. The wanting feeling. The need. How different that must be from love.
Relationships: Nott/Caleb Widogast, Veth Brenatto/Yeza Brenatto
Comments: 14
Kudos: 188





	oh, the weapons you make

**Author's Note:**

> i was asked to write caleb/nott with caleb confessing his love and i _totally dropped the ball_ on that one. but here's some ultra-ambiguous widobrave adjacent pining angst instead!
> 
> title adapted from 'afraid of the dark' by phildel.

_Are you jealous?_ Beauregard had asked.

 _I suppose I am_ , he had replied, and assumed that would be the end of it. She could no longer tease him. He could admit it and move on.

Nott had been laying somewhat behind Beauregard. Curled up on her side, facing away. Her shoulders were hunched in sleep, curled in and away. Looking smaller than usual, next to Yasha’s outstretched form. The dome shimmered faintly around them. Everything else was darkness. Black and void. It had seemed, in that moment, dreadfully and obviously symbolic.

As they return to the house, they’re all quiet. Subdued. Bent tired and small, smaller without Yasha’s shadow in the corner of the eye. Nursing bruises and near-broken bones. Necrotic burns itching as they heal.

Nott is holding Jester’s hand as they approach the door, and Caleb is walking behind them, watching. With an itch of his own, one he can’t name. Yasha, in that wall of fire. The echoes of laughter. A room full of dusty mirrors. Nott, her head turned up towards Jester, holding Jester’s hand.

He scratches at his own.

Fjord opens the door, and the chimes jangle, too loud and merry. Caleb sees Beau shoot them a glare. Almost immediately, Yeza Brenatto appears. Stopping first at the corner and then rushing outward, wiping floury hands on an apron, beaming. “Welcome back!” He gives them all a smile, a look, but only really has eyes for Nott. For his wife. “Are you okay? You were gone for a bit, I was just baking—“

“Yes, yes honey,” Nott says. Something hot and unpleasant in Caleb’s chest, at the term of endearment — he wants to scold her, nearly. You don’t talk like that. You never say things like that. Except: Nott pulls herself from Jester and takes Yeza by the arm. Except, that she does.

He hears her start to catch Yeza up on the situation. The others scatter. Fjord calls out a reminder: they’re not staying long. Caleb is left standing awkwardly in the entry hall for a moment, watching Nott talk quietly to Yeza. Watch her smile and tell him they’ll go to Nicodranis, to their son. The light not quite in her eyes. The tension in her smile. Does Yeza see it?

Does Caleb?

Surely he’s just reading what he wants…

The sick hot feeling again. He should not be so selfish. So cruel. He heads to his room. He leaves her behind.

(She looks over Yeza’s shoulder. Watches him go.)

Caleb does not forget easily. Caleb remembers well. Caleb remembers:

The first time he woke to find her using his ankles for a pillow, her sheepish awkward embarrassment after, her carefully mentioning the smell, and refusal to bathe in the river with him after.

The first time she’d clung to him in fright, after a wolf had approached their little camp, only a few days after they’d met, drawn by the sound of their talking, his surprised laughter, hoarse and unused for fifteen years.

The first time she’d summoned a spark of magic, not yet a spell, her hands warm between his, her yelp of surprise, her immediate accusal of him doing it, cheating, and her quiet wonder when she’d understood it to truly be her.

The first time they’d shared a bed, Nott curling stubbornly at his knees, both too warm and too heavy, and yet he had not wanted to move, because it had been so long since he had had contact, affectionate touch, the warmth of a person, a friend, at his side.

The first time she’d kissed him, on the cheek and nearly on the chin, her breath smelling of alcohol, excited, bright eyed, celebratory.

Waking up from unconsciousness in a field, dead gnolls scattered about them, Nott’s panicked tears hot on his cheeks.

Waking up from sleep to find her pressed against his side, under his arm, warm and snoring and open mouthed.

Hugging her after a battle, her grip tight and strong, her body heavy and solid in his arms.

Her hands on his, her knees digging into the mattress of a plush bed in a quiet room. _I will be with you until you do_ , she says. I will be with you. I will stay. Always.

The first time she’d, embarrassed, changed her clothing with him still present, her back turned and spine bony. He had not wanted to leer, but had been strangely fascinated by the emergence of form under all her layers: the loops of bandage, stark against her skin. Her long, uneven hair. He’d tried not to notice the curve of her breasts under their cloth. The sharp bones of her hips.

A woman with dark hair and dark eyes, looking down at the ground beside a gentle river. Talking about her son. Her husband.

_Are you in love with Nott?_ Beau asked. The answer had been no, of course, and he hadn’t known how to immediately explain it. The wanting feeling. The need. How different that must be from love.

Nicodranis is a wave of heat and scent: fish and ocean, sweat and cinnamon. The sunlight blinds them all for a moment, Nott, Jester, and Fjord’s more sensitive eyes in particular: they leave Yussah’s tower and stand blinking in the marketplace, dizzy from heat and light and rotting fish.

Jester is eager to play tour guide to Yeza, to point out the sights of the city as they make their way to the Lavish Chateau. He nods and exclaims politely at all the appropriate moments, pushing his hair repeatedly from his forehead: Yeza is pleasant. Hard to dislike. Not that, of course, Caleb would try.

Nott is subdued. Disguised as Veth, and looking so differently than Caleb is used to: all curves and softness where Nott is edge and bone. But her expressions are remarkably similar, even without mobile ears and cat’s eyes. The anxiety clear on her face. Jester chatters, but everyone else is subdued. And even Jester keeps nervously looking back at Nott.

Veth, Caleb thinks. At Veth.

She will be with her family now, and so she is Veth.

Although no one has said it yet, he knows she will leave them soon. Be with her son and her husband, staying in the Chateau. It is as good of an ending as he could possibly have wished for her. Comfort and safety. A husband and son.

He thinks of his own home. The kitchen, oddly shaped and narrow and warm. Cluttered with books and flaking dry herbs, a cat underfoot. His mother cooking and talking and reading all at once, losing her place in each in turn. Were this through the door of the Chateau, he too would leave. Immediately. He reminds himself.

So much paper in that house. It had burned quick and well.

He would go back to it. She should go back to hers.

She should.

And he should be pleased for her.

He is.

He _is_ , because he knows, truly, the pain of losing those you love, of opening your eyes and standing before a burnt shell of a building and knowing all that you loved has perished inside. And Nott is better than he and blameless, and deserves to return home all the more.

Yeza is pleasant and friendly and kind. He has held up remarkably well to torture and imprisonment, to hours spent alone and waiting. He loves Nott and Caleb can understand that he must be easy to love. All easy smiles. Patience and grace.

Likable. Easy to like. Easy to abandon Caleb for — no. No.

He understands. No.

(Yes — Yeza is accepting and kind. But does he know? Really? The glint Nott gets in her eye, the quickness and silence of her steps, the look of blood on her face, the way her teeth will sometimes scrape against his cheek or forehead, leaving him with a sharp twist of something that is not pain. The feel of her magic, cold-water-slippy, the echo of her voice through wire? How bad she is at teaching, how stubborn, her noisy affection when drinking, her quiet anger, her bright eyes, killing a foe in a single strike and then laughing to say it was an accident. The look of Nott, limp in a manticore’s jaws. The row of bruises that had lined her side and ribs from a dragon’s bite, and how he had held her, held onto her, even as she stank of ozone and blood.

She is _his_ , she is the first thing — the first thing ‘Caleb’ has ever had and held and loved. He gave her magic and his secrets and his trust, and they would curl up together in ditches to sleep, there in that late spring, snowflakes sometimes drifting down like the ashes of a ruined house.)

No.

At the Chateau, they watch a little boy reunite with his mother and father, and Caleb’s guilt increases, grows hotter, melts and twists inside himself, as Nott desperately tries to bribe her son’s loyalty and the others tease and laugh. He thinks he smiles as well. He does. But Luc is Nott made small, wild and bright and clever, and Luc has everything Bren dreams of for himself. Not these parents. But this reunion.

It makes it easier.

Thinking of him. That little boy.

Nott alludes that she has something to say, and the group all urge her to wait: until tomorrow, at least. To spend a day on the beach, in the sun, forgetting about loss and Yasha and the breaking of seals and goodbyes.

Nott waits until Luc is preoccupied and re-casts _disguise self_.

Caduceus holds his sunhat in place with one hand, gathers shells with the other. Fjord and Beau race and swim, and Jester splashes with them before joining Caduceus and teaching him how to build sand castles.

Luc races back and forth across the sand, picking up shells and seaweed and returning to show his parents: Yeza, trousers rolled up to the knees, and Nott disguised as Veth, staying far from the waves.

Caleb sits under a large parasol with a novel that he has yet to open.

It’s too hot. Stifling and unpleasant, the air heavy with sun. He feels dizzy and sick, and when Jester comes over to tell him he’s being a spoilsport, he cannot disagree. _Your last day. Your last chance to be with her._ But he sits in the warm shade. Watches.

He’s _been_ watching. Been staying away, keeping an eye, lingering in darkened hallways and looking at bedroom doors. Watching her shoot spiders and leap from trees. Waking up one evening to find her soaked wet from rain and giggling with Jester about Yasha and her god: wiping wet hair from her face smiling, her hand shaking. The image of her atop a mountain formed of a turtle’s shell, the wind whipping at her dress and braids, shading her eyes with both hands. The warmth he’d felt, seeing her like that. Like a conquering hero in some old novel.

Listening, too. As she asks Jester every night to send a message to Yeza.

As she and Jester whisper together and giggle together, walk away together in a room full of dusty mirrors and come back close and subdued.

It should have been —

Nott, leaping off of a bridge. Vanishing into the blackness. He’d been frozen and cold and unbreathing. Jester had jostled him as she’d run by. Leapt after, a whirl of skirts and ribbons. She had. Not he.

It should have been —

But it can’t have been. If he speaks to her, he’s frightened he might beg her to stay.

Luc and Yeza splash in the edge of the water. Nott — _Veth_ — hangs back. Her back is to Caleb, her arms folded before her, clutching at her chest, her face turned towards her family. Luc wades deeper, and Yeza pulls him back before Veth takes more than two steps.

Caleb fingers the pages of his book. It lies open. Unread.

Veth turns, looks around. Turns her face towards him. She’s too far to read her expression. She begins to walk over the sand in Caleb’s direction. She doesn’t glance back at her husband and son.

Her shadow, when she’s reached him, is too small for her current form. The limits of illusion spells. “Um, I wanted to talk to you. Can we talk?”

“Of course,” he says, without stopping to think or consider. She smiles. When Veth smiles, it is closed-mouth, full lips and no fangs. Her eyes narrow, her cheeks round. Her left has a slight dimple.

He is dizzy with heartache.

She sits down beside him in the sand. “This is nice, isn’t it?”

They look out at the others. The beach, the sun, the waves. Ships like white birds dotting the horizon. Fjord and Beau two dark specks; Yeza and Luc joining Caduceus and Jester to build castles.

“Yes,” he says. Feeling less and more oppressed by it, stiff and cold, a knot in his heart burning and twisting hot.

“But…” She looks down at her hands. Her lap. Nott had given her illusionary self a wedding band, and it sits on her left hand, beside her ring of water walking. “It isn’t real.”

_I love you_ , she says.

Kill me. Murder me. Burn me to flame and ash, so that I’m myself again, so that I’m me — remember the sound the windows had made, when the heat had caused them to burst and shatter. The popping of wood. The ash, like snow.

I love you, she says. I will never leave you.

Imagine her. Sitting or standing. Her eyes screwed shut, fists clenched. Waiting. Trusting. Imagine her limp and bloody in the jaws of a manticore, leaping from a bridge into the darkness, staggering away from a dragon, sticky with blood. Imagine her burning.

I love you, she says. It’s them I want to leave behind.

His fingers tremble. She sits close to him. He touches her hand and her shoulder and tucks flowers into her hair. He’s shaking. _I love you._

This isn’t real. _This_ is real.

They have a fine dinner at the Chateau, the group of them and Marion and Nott and Yeza’s old neighbor. Marion is quite taken with Luc, assures Yeza that there’s plenty of room for them to stay, that it is no trouble but a pleasure to have such good company. Jester and Nott have a lively and strange debate over whether or not Marion would take Yeza on as a client, and whether or not Yeza can afford it. They all have wine. Caleb has two glasses. Nott only has one. Doesn’t so much as sip at it until the end of the meal; then she gulps it down.

They work out a plan of sorts for tomorrow. Nott never announces she’s staying — she’s staying, she has chosen, and against all sense and reason she has chosen him — but includes herself in the planning, mainly by yelling to criticize Fjord in intervals.

There is an empty spot at the table, for Yasha. They all look at it, they all start whenever the door opens. But mostly everyone is tired and relaxed and sleepy with wine.

Nott leaves early with Yeza and Luc. The others peel off in ones and twos. Caleb washes his face and prepares for bed.

The room he’s been given has shutters but no windows proper, silky green curtains, whitewashed walls and too many pillows on the bed. He strips down and casts _alarm_ and stretches out in bed. Trying to get used to all the space. The dim light of the moon, the sounds of the city from the windows.

He lies on his back and stares at the ceiling.

 _I love you_.

He’d — he’d thought, or he’d hoped. That she felt that way. She’d never quite said it, never quite… always skirting around the sentiment, even when he’d tried, forced words of his own: my greatest friend. He’d meant it. She’d smiled, queasy. _I love you._ And even if she didn’t mean it like _that_ — and then he immediately wonders: like what? They are friends, they are the closest of friends, she loves him as a friend or a partner —

Thinking of how she looked, sitting in the sand. The warmth of her illusionary skin. The softness. Nott was all angles and sharp and bone in looks and voice and manner. Nott, who was quiet as a cat, gentle and patient and kind. Soft. The curve of her lips as she’d smiled…

Something wrenches in him, something tight and hot, and he realizes with horror the direction his thoughts are drifting. Rolls to his side, sits up — he does _not_ , it would be wrong to even _imagine_ —

 _I love you_ (that small explosion again). Imagines them somewhere sunny and pleasant. Reading books, studying magic in the boughs of a massive tree. Changing her into whatever form she desires, being with her —

There’s a knock on the door.

It opens, and the alarm spell twinges but does not break: Caleb is accustomed to not including Nott in its alerts. “Caleb?” she whispers, as if he is not sitting up in bed, and may be asleep.

“Ah — Nott? Yes, hello, is everything alright?” He feels embarrassed and hot, pulls the sheets up around him as though caught doing something worse than daydreaming.

“Yes, I hope I’m not bothering you.” She’s in her usual form again, her eyes catching the moonlight. She hesitates politely. Enters the room and shuts the door behind her. “Is it okay if I sleep here tonight?”

Another twisting explosion. “What about your husband?”

“He knows.” She tugs at one of her braids. “I’m tapped for magic for today, and I don’t want to risk Luc waking up and seeing… this.” She gestures at herself.

“You’re always welcome…” he trails off. Sleeping together is just something they do. Not something they discuss.

 _Are you jealous_?, Beauregard had asked him.

She leans her crossbow against the frame and climbs up onto the bed, already barefoot, wearing not her dress but a nightdress of some kind, white with puffed short sleeves. No bandages on her arms. Her hair tidy and clean.

He lies down. He has slept in the vicinity of, curled up with, Nott well over 300 times. It is nothing remarkable; it is just something they do. But —

Not since last time they were in Nicodranis. Not since before the first time they’d arrived in Felderwin, had they had a room together. He hadn’t even known she owned a nightdress.

She curls up on the other pillow.

At eye level, she doesn’t seem so small. Her face is inhuman but familiar and so dear; the darkness and moonlight smoothing out her sharp edges, darkening her eyes and hair. They both lie atop the blankets; it’s a warm night. The neck of her nightdress dips, and he can see the rise of her —

He closes his eyes.

“Hey, Caleb?”

“Ah, yes?”

“There’s… there’s something else I wanted to ask you. Not like another favor, just… a question.”

He opens his eyes again. She’s watching him intently, her pupils huge. “What is it?”

Her gaze drops. Lying on her side, she twists her hands together, in the space between them, and he waits, and waits, until it becomes clear that whatever she’d wished to ask, the words have left her — vanished into the darkness and quieting night.

He reaches out for her, touching her cheek and ear. She closes her eyes, exhaling.

He imagines: saying goodbye. Leaving her, walking away, her hand in her husband’s, a smile on her face. Turning back to watch her turn away. Waking up and sleeping alone. _I love you_ , she’d said.

Veth is lovely and soft and Nott is his. There is no one else. No one he cares for more, no one he can care for as openly. No one.

“Some things are difficult to say,” he murmurs.

She shifts and squirms and moves closer to him, against his chest and into his arms.


End file.
